Test Architectures for Distributed Systems - State of the Art and Beyond

A generic test architecture for conformance, interoperability and performance testing of distributed systems is presented. The generic test architecture extends current test architectures with respect to the types of systems that can be tested. Whereas in the conformance testing methodology and framework the focus is on testing protocol implementations, the generic architecture focuses on testing real distributed systems whose communication functions are implemented on different real systems and whose correctness can only be assessed when tested as a whole. In support of the latter requirement, a test system itself is regarded as being a distributed system whose behaviour is determined by the behaviour of components and their interaction using a flexible and dynamic communication structure.